England vs France reaps record audiences on both sides of channel

The ITV sports team

On Saturday, the England vs France FIFA World Cup quarter final match was watched by a peak audience of 23m in the UK across ITV and ITVX. In France, TF1’s peak audience was 20m, the best quarter final audience since World Cup 2006 in Germany.

Both figures were described by their respective broadcasters as the best audiences of the year. For those who missed the action, a Harry Kane penalty miss in the second half allowed the French to squeeze through to the semi-finals with a 2-1 win.

In the UK, ITV said the game drew “the biggest audience of the tournament and the highest peak on any channel this year (biggest since the final of last year’s European Championship between England and Italy). It was the most watched programme on television on any channel this year for all viewers (15.1m) and 16-34s (2.5m).”

Across all viewing on all devices, an average audience of 20.4 million viewers watched the match with ITV – with an average of close to 16 million viewers [15.8m] watching the full live and exclusive coverage. ITV also showed the game between Morocco and Portugal, which was streamed 8.2m times. In total there were 30m streams on the new ITVX platform, which is the best ever for ITVX or its predecessor ITV Hub.

Back in France, research group Mediametrie reported that the England vs France game peaked secured an average audience of 17.7m, which equates to a 62.8% share. France’s previous fixture against Poland averaged 14.3m.